The use of "sir" a number of times in this interview makes me think that the title should be made official. His contribution to computer technology in this country has changed lives worldwide, I dare say even saved lives. Many people who have developed groundbreaking technologies have gone on to exploit that for vast personal gain. "Sir" Steve has used his talents to educate others and research ways of helping people. If Sir Clive can get a knighthood for selling computers, then one is deserved here for changing so many lives for the better.
It was a real pleasure to chat with Steve, thank you to the Patrons who submitted questions for him during this chat. If you'd like to find out more about the SpiNNaker project then check this page apt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/projects/SpiNNaker/project/
What two lovely blokes. This was enthralling from start to finish. You're a treasure Neil. In an online world where the loudest and most obnoxious gain the most attention, it's refreshing to see enthusiasts who don't feel the need to adhere to that standard. Keep on rocking you gorgeous thang 🤗
Starting 26:50, just posted on Twitter, a pic of the first ever computer we owned, a Dolphin BBC Micro in India. That changed the lives of a 16 and 12 year olds in 1984, and we will never forget you. Thank you, from the deepest of our hearts!
Probably, in the long run, it also changed the country from bullock carts to an IT superpower by 2000. Who knows. Probably the two of us were just representatives.
Although I didn't have a BBC Micro or any Acorn machine (I was a Commodore owner - VIC20, C64, Amigas), I feel like I have grown up with people like this. It was a wonderful time in my life and went on to make a career for me. People like this are the superstars and heros of my life, not the vacuous TV celebrities of today. These are the people I look up to. Thank you.
Great to hear from such a veteran of the computer industry in a truly interesting interview. It’s amazing to think that the arm processors started life as an 800 line bbc basic program.
Pretty sure ARM1&2 are old enough that their patents are void. Plus the newer processors use vastly different instructions and went up to 32 bit address bus and took the flags out of the top 6 bits of said address.@@richardpurves
What an absulute coup to have this extremely important gentlemen talk to RMC. Such a great talk to him thank you. What a pleasure it was. The BBC and Acorn means such much to so many and this very intelligent man was an integral part of its addition to technology and society as a whole. I shall never forget using the BBC computer at school, when I could, and also the Electron as I learnt BASIC together with my Spectrum 48k back in the 80s. Amazing times. I wish I had of learnt even more back then. But it put me in good sted for many years when moving onto MS DOS and PCs, Amiga 500 Windows and Linux. Now I feel I'm going full circle with a new raspberry Pi 400.
Absolute legend.. if it wasn't for the Archimedes I wouldn't have got into IT and got to where I am in my career today. What a humble man, I honestly don't think Steve even realises how many lives he and his team changed (for the better).
A simply fantastic amazing interview, I was thoroughly absorbed for the entire time. Thank you for arranging it and for Steve for giving such great answers beyond just a few words.
47:15 It's interesting hearing that, after you dismissed the ORIC line as "come and gone quietly" - the Atmos manual is what first got me into programming when I was 10, and I didn't even have the machine to experiment with :-) turns out being able to interpret programs in your head is a _very_ marketable skill indeed hahaha!
The Huddersfield show he referred to was Acorn World in 2009 - I was there exhibiting a BBC Buggy. His talk was a real highlight to the whole event (except for the bloke who hogged the Q&A session right at the end while boring everyone else to death). I've also seen Sophie Wilson do a talk at another retro event. It covered a whole load of different subjects - many of which had nothing to do with retro computing - and was absolutely fascinating.
Well thankyou for this. This video has answered many of the questions I would forget to ask Steve if I met him! Such a beautiful and professional interview but with such a warm friendly feel, I don’t think we could have asked for more. Thanks Neil, and thanks Steve, you will never know what your little creation did for me and many others. As I trained and fixed the bbc micros across the south east education authority. Thanks 😊
Excellent Interview with a true legend. As a kid a BBC Model B (with dual floppy drives and 32k RAM) was my main computer until the family purchased a Pentium Pro many years later, I have a lot of fond memories of the fun that could come from a shift+break input :)
Thanks for this video!! The Acorn guys are absolute legends, right up there with Dave Haynie, RJ Mical, Bil Herd and the rest of my Commodore heroes. The Acorn guys don't get the respect they deserve. Why haven't they been given OBEs?
@@sierraromeoromeo2444 Well the first one is contentious. Kraft said that they would keep the Keynsham factory running if they succeeded in their bid, then changed their mind shortly afterwards, off-shoring production. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-12118639. Then they reduced the quality of the product. www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/12/shellshock-cadbury-comes-clean-on-creme-egg-chocolate-change#:~:text=The%20day%20when%20it%20was,It's%20no%20longer%20Dairy%20Milk. Back to ARM it will soon be part of NVidia and will probably go the same way as Cadbury's.
Sir Steve is kind of a hero of mine. Not just because of Micro Men, but the involvement in the ARM processor, AI, neural nets etc. Can't wait to hear this. ;)
So brilliant to hear from the pioneer’s of the day, which made the 8-bit era, so wonderfully amazing and set the scene for everything that followed, thanks for making this available
Brilliant interview. The first time I have ever listened to a computer based interview and it was a good one to start with. I still enjoy using my Risc PCs today.
Despite me saying I had watched this last week, I needed to head back to work as I was on call. Last night (Feb 3rd) I sat down & *REALLY* watched this video. Mr Furber is one smart cookie. What he (and the team) did with the BBC Micro was *the* reason I love computers today. A true British Legend. I know he has the CBE but I really do think its time he was upgraded to a Knighthood. *Sir* Steve Furber. That's much more fitting for a man who put a microchip into EVERY home ....... in fact more like 10 chips in every home. Great interview *RMC* & some excellent viewer questions too.
Nevermind making the computer that the BBC took up for teaching the nation computers - Sinclair's got rejected. Yet he's a Sir? The Acorn team both created ARM which took the world by storm once powerful yet EFFICIENT processors were needed for things like the original iPod, and also a really damn good home computer that the government backed up.
Neil, kudos sir, these really are bloody fab! You have a relaxing professional and personable style that seems to bring out the best from your guests. Well done! Now subscribed in my fav podcast app :)
Great interview here, from the Arm one through the Arm 9 and 11 / StrongARM ( used in alot of devices not limited to Gameboy Advance, sharp zuarus / various handhelds ). Then came the Cortex (A) series with Beagleboard to where we are today.
Thanx for interesting historical perspectives. So nice to learn how tech evolved across the pond. If I had had friends/mentors with coding interests back then my life might have been different. C64/Mac.
Really great interview thanks. Just got near to the one hour marl where the the Acorn Phoebe/Risc PC II got mentioned. On 9th June 1998 in the Main Debating Hall - Manchester University Students' Union Building I got to see the non-working prototype (Bright Yellow) Here is the mini report I did from that event which used to be on my old Acorn Blog - The last meeting of the Manchester Acorn User Group before the Summer break was held at 6:45pm on Tuesday 9th June (Main Debating Hall - Manchester University Students' Union Building.) Russell Scoates and Dave Walker from Acorn brought along (unfortunately) a non-working Phoebe 2100 prototype. At a demonstration the week before in Holland - 'The BigBen Club Show?' - the Vidic20 had blown. However the talks given by both and the full and frank way in which they answered many questions about the new hardware and software made the meeting very informative. Apart from a few areas where 'non-disclosure' agreements held back the free flow of information a number of details of the new machine were clarified. The first batch of a hundred or so machines will go to software developers and suppliers. The second batch of two hundred and fifty should ship in late August giving a final chance to sort out any last-minute problems before ramping up to full scale production. Hopefully September or possibly early October - but definitely in time for the Acorn show - Phoebe goes into full production. The machine will definitely ship with a 6.4 Gig Harddrive. At least four PCI cards software drivers are already being developed - PC,SCSI,Grapics and Video. The speed of the serial links will be doubled to 200,000 bps. The speed if the Vidic chip is also doubled to 200Mhz (1600 by 1200 in 256 cols hopefully.) The Risc OS 4 will be in 4Mbs of ROM but this will soft load into Ram on boot-up to give faster operation. There is a link on the motherboard that would allow the ROM to be increased to 8 Mbs. As well as side access to the inside of the machine it is possible to lay the machine on it's side and then the bottom panel can be flipped back to allow the motherboard to side out. A CD Rom with a full copy of the software shipped on the harddisc is very likely. Also being considered is loading a large batch of Shareware and Demo software on the harddisc. Some decisions have yet to be made on other software to be included free ie Replay3. Also being considered is whether some form of upgrade voucher will be provided ensuring a fixed cost upgrade to a higher spec StrongArm daughter-board if or when one becomes available. Already there are reports of chips being developed that will hopefully run at 360 Mhz. And below the possible working specs were (as of late August 1998 at Wakefield) as below: Details of Risc Pc II - unlikely to be built now - details left here for us fans to weep over. (See top of this page for latest developments.) They are based on my understanding of what was said at Wakefield - so no guarantees as to how accurate these details are. The Risc 4 desktop and case looked good at the show but all the hardware was not in the machines so no idea as to how fast they will run but they are expected to be 3 to 4 times as fast with same StrongArm chip as Risc Pc. Talk on the Acorn Newsgroups in late August suggest that there is now another change of heart over the naming of this new machine - the search for a new name may be on again! 64Mhz motherboard 32 SRRAM 4(EDO)VRAM 6.4 GIG Harddisc 3 old sytle podules, 4 PCI slots, 32 speed CD Rom and 230W power unit. New Risc OS 4 allowing file names of up to 255 letters (truncation can be user set) 80,000 items per directory new LFU harddisc making large discs waste less space (for any given size disc the block size will 16 times smaller! ie instead of 32k blocks - 2k blocks) will support harddiscs up to 128 Gigs!!! :-) Tidy up of desktop with new 'bring to the front window' to support built in screen saver. A new 'minimise' button on window frames. Two serial ports , joystick port Midi in/out, parallel port inproved Vidc20 getting twice the video speed (1600*1200*36,000 cols) Microphone in socket EIDE harddisc interface to level 4 (ie 16Mbs per second) supporting 4 devices. On sale as from September with or without Iiyma 15in monitor (1500 plus VAT without monitor) but at show they said that as prices of things like harddiscs kept dropping these specs/prices could alter.
The archimedes 310 was the computer I experienced some of my early love for games on: Lemmings and Terramex. Have been watching this on a great ancestor of the Arc, the apple iPad.
I thought Micro Men was a rather appalling hatchet job on Clive Sinclair. It seemed to me the primary justification was creating a history that justified the BBC muscling into the marketplace with their own unnecessary badged product. As a teenager at the time I never understood why they even thought they needed their own PC to accompany a TV series that was, on watching, very simplistic and general indeed.
It would be interesting to know what financial agreements there were, if any. Did Acorn pay to use the BBC name ? What was obvious by the time the BBC Micro was launched was that a standardised computer was needed for educational computing. Can you imagine trying to write educational software if the market was spread over a dozen or more platforms. Other computers used by some places before the BBC. Our school computer was a Busicom 2017 (look it up). One, in the maths resources room, for about 1200 pupils. The college I went to had both Commodore Pets and Research Machines 380Zs. However, all these machines were used purely for teaching computing, mainly at assembler level. All were built to a similar robust standard to the BBC Micro, but probably cost even more.
RISC OS **purrs** my favourite OS on my favourite computers from school! Built into ROM, the Acorn never dies! I loved experimenting with it, I discovered it booted from ROM which was very exciting, broke it, told the teacher it went wrong and when the Acorn guy came to fix the computer he wasn’t there for long, corrupted cmos and or corrupted !Boot usually so he held down R or delete and used his Zip drive to copy !Boot back in. I miss my awesome Acorn.
The Arduino is a closer eco-system to the OG BBC. You can even just code bare metal on the Atmel chips. I 53 and my brother 56 both got 'O' Level Computer Studies as he strawberry picked until he had the £465 for a Model B + DFS. He's still a virtualisation trainer/consultant. I took early retirement.
Here's the video in which Chris Curry, Steve Furber and Hermann Hauser do a sort of "directors commentary" of Micro Men. Another good watch. ua-cam.com/video/yaonVYOTSsk/v-deo.html
18:08 Back then I worked with a bloke in his early twenties who would smoke and solder at the same time (solder between finger and thumb, cigarette between the next two fingers !). That was in a defence company though. Maybe Cambridge was more enlightened.
Yes, it should be Sir Steve Furber. Do not be fooled by the mild mannered and modest laguage, Steve Furber with Sophie Wilson created a technology that woud end up in billions of devices, such a phones, ipads, Raspberry Pis, mobiles etc. The big players persisted with CISC processors that became more and more complex, using more an dmore power. Furber and Wilson were pracitioners of Occam's Razor which says that a simpler and more elegant solution is most often the better solution. Easy said, but much harder to do.
@@RMCRetro I dunno, You are really doing a fantastic job with the interviews. Your letting them answer and not interjecting, basically your not being a diva, or an interrogator. Your just being respectful and enjoying meeting the heroes, just as we do too, to hear their story. It's really quite fascinating, you have found a great niche on youtube that no other has really accomplished IMO. And at the end off the day, if I was asked to describe my story to people that appreciate what I have done in a friendly receptive environment, I would any human would.
Great interview here, from the Arm one through the Arm 9 and 11 / StrongARM ( used in alot of devices not limited to Gameboy Advance, sharp zuarus / various handhelds ). Then came the Cortex (A) series with Beagleboard to where we are today.
The use of "sir" a number of times in this interview makes me think that the title should be made official.
His contribution to computer technology in this country has changed lives worldwide, I dare say even saved lives.
Many people who have developed groundbreaking technologies have gone on to exploit that for vast personal gain. "Sir" Steve has used his talents to educate others and research ways of helping people.
If Sir Clive can get a knighthood for selling computers, then one is deserved here for changing so many lives for the better.
If he isn't official "sir" by now, 2024, this is a crime of negligence on the behave of the British state.
It was a real pleasure to chat with Steve, thank you to the Patrons who submitted questions for him during this chat. If you'd like to find out more about the SpiNNaker project then check this page apt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/projects/SpiNNaker/project/
What two lovely blokes. This was enthralling from start to finish. You're a treasure Neil. In an online world where the loudest and most obnoxious gain the most attention, it's refreshing to see enthusiasts who don't feel the need to adhere to that standard. Keep on rocking you gorgeous thang 🤗
Great to see Steve Furber. He was one of my lecturers at Manchester back in the early 90s. I was not a good student :)
Same :)
Always a pleasure to see interviews with Steve, he's a really interesting guy to listen to.
I am sure I have met you at some point but I can't remember where. OCSL or HP? :)
@@macartm I've had a lot of jobs :) Drop me an email sometime.
Not everyday one gets to listen to a true legend of computing. Thanks. :)
Starting 26:50, just posted on Twitter, a pic of the first ever computer we owned, a Dolphin BBC Micro in India. That changed the lives of a 16 and 12 year olds in 1984, and we will never forget you. Thank you, from the deepest of our hearts!
Probably, in the long run, it also changed the country from bullock carts to an IT superpower by 2000. Who knows. Probably the two of us were just representatives.
Although I didn't have a BBC Micro or any Acorn machine (I was a Commodore owner - VIC20, C64, Amigas), I feel like I have grown up with people like this. It was a wonderful time in my life and went on to make a career for me. People like this are the superstars and heros of my life, not the vacuous TV celebrities of today. These are the people I look up to. Thank you.
Great to hear from such a veteran of the computer industry in a truly interesting interview. It’s amazing to think that the arm processors started life as an 800 line bbc basic program.
Anyone got a link to that 800 lines that Steve found in his garage?
@@GuyHindle That's still ARM company confidential I believe.
Pretty sure ARM1&2 are old enough that their patents are void. Plus the newer processors use vastly different instructions and went up to 32 bit address bus and took the flags out of the top 6 bits of said address.@@richardpurves
What an absulute coup to have this extremely important gentlemen talk to RMC. Such a great talk to him thank you. What a pleasure it was. The BBC and Acorn means such much to so many and this very intelligent man was an integral part of its addition to technology and society as a whole. I shall never forget using the BBC computer at school, when I could, and also the Electron as I learnt BASIC together with my Spectrum 48k back in the 80s. Amazing times. I wish I had of learnt even more back then. But it put me in good sted for many years when moving onto MS DOS and PCs, Amiga 500 Windows and Linux. Now I feel I'm going full circle with a new raspberry Pi 400.
In an age of increasing technical sophistication, simplicity is still the ultimate achievement.
---- Steve Furber
Absolute legend.. if it wasn't for the Archimedes I wouldn't have got into IT and got to where I am in my career today. What a humble man, I honestly don't think Steve even realises how many lives he and his team changed (for the better).
A simply fantastic amazing interview, I was thoroughly absorbed for the entire time. Thank you for arranging it and for Steve for giving such great answers beyond just a few words.
47:15 It's interesting hearing that, after you dismissed the ORIC line as "come and gone quietly" - the Atmos manual is what first got me into programming when I was 10, and I didn't even have the machine to experiment with :-) turns out being able to interpret programs in your head is a _very_ marketable skill indeed hahaha!
Wow getting some of the big players on for interviews. Hope you can book Sophie Wilson at some point as well.
I love them both to bits.
The Huddersfield show he referred to was Acorn World in 2009 - I was there exhibiting a BBC Buggy. His talk was a real highlight to the whole event (except for the bloke who hogged the Q&A session right at the end while boring everyone else to death).
I've also seen Sophie Wilson do a talk at another retro event. It covered a whole load of different subjects - many of which had nothing to do with retro computing - and was absolutely fascinating.
Well thankyou for this. This video has answered many of the questions I would forget to ask Steve if I met him! Such a beautiful and professional interview but with such a warm friendly feel, I don’t think we could have asked for more. Thanks Neil, and thanks Steve, you will never know what your little creation did for me and many others. As I trained and fixed the bbc micros across the south east education authority. Thanks 😊
Absolutly amazing and ultra facinating. I'd just like to say, top questions and interview RMC :)
Excellent Interview with a true legend.
As a kid a BBC Model B (with dual floppy drives and 32k RAM) was my main computer until the family purchased a Pentium Pro many years later, I have a lot of fond memories of the fun that could come from a shift+break input :)
Have fond memories of the BBC and Archimedes.
Great interview Neil! What a legend of computing!
Thanks for this video!! The Acorn guys are absolute legends, right up there with Dave Haynie, RJ Mical, Bil Herd and the rest of my Commodore heroes. The Acorn guys don't get the respect they deserve. Why haven't they been given OBEs?
and why was ARM allowed to be sold off to the Japanese ?
@@sierraromeoromeo2444 Well the first one is contentious. Kraft said that they would keep the Keynsham factory running if they succeeded in their bid, then changed their mind shortly afterwards, off-shoring production. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-12118639. Then they reduced the quality of the product. www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/12/shellshock-cadbury-comes-clean-on-creme-egg-chocolate-change#:~:text=The%20day%20when%20it%20was,It's%20no%20longer%20Dairy%20Milk.
Back to ARM it will soon be part of NVidia and will probably go the same way as Cadbury's.
Well, RMC, you done it again! Honestly your doing a fantastic service to history. Great interview.
Sir Steve is kind of a hero of mine.
Not just because of Micro Men, but the involvement in the ARM processor, AI, neural nets etc.
Can't wait to hear this. ;)
Superb chat. ;)
And he approves of MiSTer / FPGA retro preservation, too.
What an amazing man and a great interview. Just wish you had covered the Acorn Electron as well. Thank you though.
So brilliant to hear from the pioneer’s of the day, which made the 8-bit era, so wonderfully amazing and set the scene for everything that followed, thanks for making this available
This is great, some wonderful questions and good to see the man still loves his craft.
Legend. Great Interview.
Gosh Neil you run an excellent interview! Really interesting to hear all of Steve’s stories, and a great set of questions from you and the community.
Absolutely fascinating. Such a treat to get the current thoughts of true pioneer from back in the day.
Brilliant interview. The first time I have ever listened to a computer based interview and it was a good one to start with. I still enjoy using my Risc PCs today.
Despite me saying I had watched this last week, I needed to head back to work as I was on call.
Last night (Feb 3rd) I sat down & *REALLY* watched this video. Mr Furber is one smart cookie. What he (and the team) did with the BBC Micro was *the* reason I love computers today.
A true British Legend. I know he has the CBE but I really do think its time he was upgraded to a Knighthood. *Sir* Steve Furber. That's much more fitting for a man who put a microchip into EVERY home ....... in fact more like 10 chips in every home.
Great interview *RMC* & some excellent viewer questions too.
Nevermind making the computer that the BBC took up for teaching the nation computers - Sinclair's got rejected. Yet he's a Sir? The Acorn team both created ARM which took the world by storm once powerful yet EFFICIENT processors were needed for things like the original iPod, and also a really damn good home computer that the government backed up.
A very interesting interview with lots of interesting discussion points. Thanks.
LOL 35°C in Australia isn't the desert..... That's just a Wednesday.
Frigging awesome interview.
From the start with the BBC to this episode i loved it :)
Neil, kudos sir, these really are bloody fab! You have a relaxing professional and personable style that seems to bring out the best from your guests. Well done! Now subscribed in my fav podcast app :)
Excellent interview!
That was wonderful. Thanks!
Great interview here, from the Arm one through the Arm 9 and 11 / StrongARM ( used in alot of devices not limited to Gameboy Advance, sharp zuarus / various handhelds ). Then came the Cortex (A) series with Beagleboard to where we are today.
Thanx for interesting historical perspectives. So nice to learn how tech evolved across the pond. If I had had friends/mentors with coding interests back then my life might have been different. C64/Mac.
How can there not be a picture of the Indian Dolphin version anywhere on the internet?!
I know right!
Fantastic video. Thanks so much this. Steve is a legend! :-) Sophie, Hermann and Chris next please...?
Has anyone seen a Dolphin though?!
I happen to own one
OMG what a legend !!!
More Steve please! Great vid.
Really great interview thanks. Just got near to the one hour marl where the the Acorn Phoebe/Risc PC II got mentioned. On 9th June 1998 in the Main Debating Hall - Manchester University Students' Union Building I got to see the non-working prototype (Bright Yellow) Here is the mini report I did from that event which used to be on my old Acorn Blog -
The last meeting of the Manchester Acorn User Group before the Summer break was held at 6:45pm on Tuesday 9th June (Main Debating Hall - Manchester University Students' Union Building.)
Russell Scoates and Dave Walker from Acorn brought along (unfortunately) a non-working Phoebe 2100 prototype. At a demonstration the week before in Holland - 'The BigBen Club Show?' - the Vidic20 had blown.
However the talks given by both and the full and frank way in which they answered many questions about the new hardware and software made the meeting very informative.
Apart from a few areas where 'non-disclosure' agreements held back the free flow of information a number of details of the new machine were clarified.
The first batch of a hundred or so machines will go to software developers and suppliers.
The second batch of two hundred and fifty should ship in late August giving a final chance to sort out any last-minute problems before ramping up to full scale production.
Hopefully September or possibly early October - but definitely in time for the Acorn show - Phoebe goes into full production.
The machine will definitely ship with a 6.4 Gig Harddrive.
At least four PCI cards software drivers are already being developed - PC,SCSI,Grapics and Video.
The speed of the serial links will be doubled to 200,000 bps.
The speed if the Vidic chip is also doubled to 200Mhz (1600 by 1200 in 256 cols hopefully.)
The Risc OS 4 will be in 4Mbs of ROM but this will soft load into Ram on boot-up to give faster operation.
There is a link on the motherboard that would allow the ROM to be increased to 8 Mbs.
As well as side access to the inside of the machine it is possible to lay the machine on it's side and then the bottom panel can be flipped back to allow the motherboard to side out.
A CD Rom with a full copy of the software shipped on the harddisc is very likely. Also being considered is loading a large batch of Shareware and Demo software on the harddisc.
Some decisions have yet to be made on other software to be included free ie Replay3.
Also being considered is whether some form of upgrade voucher will be provided ensuring a fixed cost upgrade to a higher spec StrongArm daughter-board if or when one becomes available.
Already there are reports of chips being developed that will hopefully run at 360 Mhz.
And below the possible working specs were (as of late August 1998 at Wakefield) as below:
Details of Risc Pc II - unlikely to be built now - details left here for us fans to weep over. (See top of this page for latest developments.)
They are based on my understanding of what was said at Wakefield - so no guarantees as to how accurate these details are.
The Risc 4 desktop and case looked good at the show but all the hardware was not in the machines so no idea as to how fast they will run but they are expected to be 3 to 4 times as fast with same StrongArm chip as Risc Pc.
Talk on the Acorn Newsgroups in late August suggest that there is now another change of heart over the naming of this new machine - the search for a new name may be on again!
64Mhz motherboard 32 SRRAM 4(EDO)VRAM 6.4 GIG Harddisc
3 old sytle podules, 4 PCI slots, 32 speed CD Rom and 230W power unit.
New Risc OS 4 allowing file names of up to 255 letters (truncation can be user set)
80,000 items per directory new LFU harddisc making large discs waste less space (for any given size disc the block size will 16 times smaller! ie instead of 32k blocks - 2k blocks) will support harddiscs up to 128 Gigs!!! :-)
Tidy up of desktop with new 'bring to the front window' to support built in screen saver.
A new 'minimise' button on window frames.
Two serial ports , joystick port Midi in/out, parallel port inproved Vidc20 getting twice the video speed (1600*1200*36,000 cols) Microphone in socket
EIDE harddisc interface to level 4 (ie 16Mbs per second) supporting 4 devices.
On sale as from September with or without Iiyma 15in monitor (1500 plus VAT without monitor) but at show they said that as prices of things like harddiscs kept dropping these specs/prices could alter.
The archimedes 310 was the computer I experienced some of my early love for games on: Lemmings and Terramex. Have been watching this on a great ancestor of the Arc, the apple iPad.
* Descendant
"Ancestor"'s going in the other direction. But we all know what you meant. :D
I thought Micro Men was a rather appalling hatchet job on Clive Sinclair. It seemed to me the primary justification was creating a history that justified the BBC muscling into the marketplace with their own unnecessary badged product. As a teenager at the time I never understood why they even thought they needed their own PC to accompany a TV series that was, on watching, very simplistic and general indeed.
It would be interesting to know what financial agreements there were, if any. Did Acorn pay to use the BBC name ?
What was obvious by the time the BBC Micro was launched was that a standardised computer was needed for educational computing. Can you imagine trying to write educational software if the market was spread over a dozen or more platforms. Other computers used by some places before the BBC. Our school computer was a Busicom 2017 (look it up). One, in the maths resources room, for about 1200 pupils. The college I went to had both Commodore Pets and Research Machines 380Zs. However, all these machines were used purely for teaching computing, mainly at assembler level. All were built to a similar robust standard to the BBC Micro, but probably cost even more.
Super fascinating!
RISC OS **purrs** my favourite OS on my favourite computers from school! Built into ROM, the Acorn never dies! I loved experimenting with it, I discovered it booted from ROM which was very exciting, broke it, told the teacher it went wrong and when the Acorn guy came to fix the computer he wasn’t there for long, corrupted cmos and or corrupted !Boot usually so he held down R or delete and used his Zip drive to copy !Boot back in. I miss my awesome Acorn.
www.riscosopen.org Still being developed for a number of different hardware platforms including the Raspberry Pi. It runs VERY fast.
Truly the stuff of Legends !!
Great interview. It would be amazing to get an interview with Sophie Wilson too. (demanding much?) :)
OMG you need to get Sophie Wilson. She's my heroine.
Aww shit.... I must have been way too tired. Williams corrected to Wilson now. Jesus, my brain. Thanks
The Arduino is a closer eco-system to the OG BBC. You can even just code bare metal on the Atmel chips.
I 53 and my brother 56 both got 'O' Level Computer Studies as he strawberry picked until he had the £465 for a Model B + DFS. He's still a virtualisation trainer/consultant. I took early retirement.
Great interview.
I really want to hear more about the SpiNNaker Project / Human Brain Project / BIMPC.
Here's the video in which Chris Curry, Steve Furber and Hermann Hauser do a sort of "directors commentary" of Micro Men. Another good watch.
ua-cam.com/video/yaonVYOTSsk/v-deo.html
Brilliant.
Does anyone have a link to the "800 lines" of BBC Basic which was the ARM reference?
18:08 Back then I worked with a bloke in his early twenties who would smoke and solder at the same time (solder between finger and thumb, cigarette between the next two fingers !). That was in a defence company though. Maybe Cambridge was more enlightened.
Only Acorn makes it possible!
I could listen to this guy for hours. Check out computerphile
's videos with him. :)
I wonder what scenes were created for Micromen.
There's a video of Chris Curry and Herman Hauser discussing that very topic. Worth a watch :)
OK *RMC* , I'm here now 😂
How accurate is the portrayal of Steve in the Micromen drama?
Keep listening this, he answers it in the chat
Have a look at the 'The Centre for Computing Historys' channel for an insight to Chris, Steve and Hermann's reactions to The Micro Men.
@@SabretoothBarnacle Somehow I doubt whether we will ever get to see Clive Sinclair's reaction :-)
Awesome sauce ;-)
Yes, it should be Sir Steve Furber. Do not be fooled by the mild mannered and modest laguage, Steve Furber with Sophie Wilson created a technology that woud end up in billions of devices, such a phones, ipads, Raspberry Pis, mobiles etc. The big players persisted with CISC processors that became more and more complex, using more an dmore power. Furber and Wilson were pracitioners of Occam's Razor which says that a simpler and more elegant solution is most often the better solution. Easy said, but much harder to do.
INSTALIKE!
Id like to see a T break with Sinclair, i just dont think you have that much pulling power. He would probably think your to small a channel.
I suspect you might be right, maybe one day hey
He hasn't been well this last year :'(
@@KarlHamilton :(
@@RMCRetro I dunno, You are really doing a fantastic job with the interviews. Your letting them answer and not interjecting, basically your not being a diva, or an interrogator. Your just being respectful and enjoying meeting the heroes, just as we do too, to hear their story. It's really quite fascinating, you have found a great niche on youtube that no other has really accomplished IMO. And at the end off the day, if I was asked to describe my story to people that appreciate what I have done in a friendly receptive environment, I would any human would.
wow
A fascinating look back at an exciting period. This is real history.
Great interview here, from the Arm one through the Arm 9 and 11 / StrongARM ( used in alot of devices not limited to Gameboy Advance, sharp zuarus / various handhelds ). Then came the Cortex (A) series with Beagleboard to where we are today.
I remember when ARM being designed into the Gameboy Advance was front page news on Electronics Weekly. magazine.